Another one of my fav Ds9 scenes.

I wrote about this in another post and I don’t think I can say it better now so I’ll just paste that in:

I love this scene because it says so much.

Firstly, about Kai Winn as a character. She isn’t a one dimensional villain. She isn’t blindly following her faith and that is her only motivation. She has struggled with it and have been punished for it. It would have been so much easier for her to chose another path. To renounce her faith or to simply stop teaching it. But she fought for it.

Secondly, about Bajor as a society. Why is their faith so important to them? Because so many people like Kai Winn had only their faith during the occupation. They held on to their faith. Surely partly because the Cardassians hated it. It was always a form of resistance in itself to keep believing, keep praying, keep gathering in secrecy.

Thirdly, it says a lot about Ds9 as a show. This is exactly why I love Ds9. They weren’t satisfied with Winn as a simple antagonist, there to show up now and then and make trouble for Sisko with some religious opposition. Instead they made her complex. They chose to let us understand her. They do this with a lot of their characters and they do it so well.

How the scene plays out comes as a surprise when viewing the episode for the first time. Of course they are going to exchange some banter and then go separate ways? Of course we the viewers will be left satisfied with knowing who the enemy and the heroes are? No, says Ds9.

Instead Winn here challenges Kira’s, and in turn the viewer’s, maybe quite simplistic narrative. Her disdain for Winn is understandable, but Winn reminds her and the viewers that reality is always more complicated.